 Cancer is a disease, it's a genetic disease, so it's driven by how our DNA is red and everyone has different DNA, they have a different DNA signature. My name is Renee and I'm a postdoctoral researcher here at the John Curtin School for Medical Research. In my spare time when I'm not here, I'm involved in rowing with the Australian rowing team and also the ACT Academy of Sport. We have genes in our body that are switched on or switched off to drive different biological processes so for our heart to pump or our muscles to grow and so when those genes are switched on and they're not supposed to be switched on or they're switched off but they're supposed to be switched on we start to get errors in how we maintain our body so to speak and so when that happens we can get cancer and everyone's genetic makeup is different so you think of how many people are in the world how many different genetic combinations there are it kind of gives you an idea of how many cancers could possibly form so your job is to find something similar in all of these people and all of their cancer disease if you like to see if you can help all of them and that's quite hard to do but there are similarities, many cancers are characterised by cells that are growing incorrectly so it is possible that you can find a few mechanisms that are the same across cancers I mean we've made many inroads into different cures for cancer or certainly prolonging life or helping people live a better life and my motivation is that it's just a challenge and it's always changing and you want to contribute to that